Listing of Packages

Description

Usage

Arguments

logical; if TRUE return a character vector
of all available packages in lib.loc.

lib.loc

a character vector describing the location of R
library trees to search through, or NULL. The default value
of NULL corresponds to .libPaths().

Details

.packages() returns the names of the currently
attached packages invisibly whereas
.packages(all.available = TRUE) gives (visibly) all
packages available in the library location path lib.loc.

For a package to be regarded as being ‘available’ it must have valid
metadata (and hence be an installed package). However, this will
report a package as available if the metadata does not match the
directory name: use find.package to confirm that the
metadata match or installed.packages for a much slower
but more comprehensive check of ‘available’ packages.

Value

Note

.packages(all.available = TRUE) is not a way to find out if a
small number of packages are available for use: not only is it
expensive when thousands of packages are installed, it is an
incomplete test. See the help for find.package for why
require should be used.

Author(s)

R core;
Guido Masarotto for the all.available = TRUE part of
.packages.

See Also

library, .libPaths,
installed.packages.

Examples

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(.packages())# maybe just "base".packages(all.available =TRUE)# return all available as character vectorrequire(splines)(.packages())# "splines", toodetach("package:splines")